Arkansas River "End of Season" Recon 04Sep15

Greg and I met 1st at Rincon on the way to O'Haver for the end of season camping trip. We hit the water about 10:30am with knowledge that none of the local campground fishermen were having any luck... but then, they are not CoWWs. That said, it was not epic but Greg caught 5 browns and I caught a couple rainbows and 1 brown (weird theme developing there). Nymphing was all that was working on stones, red CJ and RS2... I used a dry as my bobber for a long time but nothing ever looked up. By noon we decided to imbibe and share a Subway. The vibe was all good but we decided to head to O'Haver after lunch to set up camp - though I bailed on the plan and jumped into the river again at the CG at the Chaffee Co line. I had a much more productive afternoon on the same bugs but strangely continued to catch a high number of rainbows. The water started to color from gin clear and I saw up near camp it was raining. The opposite of normal occurred here too - I caught smaller fish the further upstream I went... when I got to the boat ramp I caught 25 or so 8" rainbows by dragging a stimulator wet beneath the falls... I eventually tired of the size (and stupidity of the recent stockers I presume) and headed back to the car where Greg had just arrived from setting camp and was gonna fish. I was done so observed a while then headed to camp to prepare my promised Breck Kick cocktails... this is my variant of the Moscow Mule using Breck vodka and adding some bitters to the mix of lime, vodka and ginger beer. The team including Dave & Lisa as well as Dave's brother Doug enjoyed them with Greg and I. Though we burned my dozen limes and all the scrounging Greg and I could muster hunting through Dave's stuff and truck at 10:30pm wouldn't turn up another so we fortunately didn't "enjoy" that stupid 5th one. I slept in the car and awoke pretty creaky, 'casue I'm and old dude that slept in the car in my clothes. Day 2 we decided to try some new water and chose Big Bend SWA and a leased parcel at that. Again not an epic AM as to catching fish though Greg was into them pretty quickly and I did catch one of the nicer browns I've had on the Arkansas - probably 17" or better. Here again we used stones (nada for me despite so much evidence of their being here), red CJs, RS2s and I used a red-headed black zebra midge emerger that scored some. The views were awesome of Collegiates. Greg and I ate lunch at Amica's as typical, the Salsica pizza was excellent, and enjoyed an ale there before I dropped Greg back at camp so I could head north to Summit. I'd been hankerin' to try the Arki upstream of Twin Lks where it get's more meadow-like and smaller and I stopped at the Kobe put in for 90 min before a storm forced me off the water. I did OK with a couple of browns from that stop. All in all I have evidence that while some think high runoff years help the fisheries, if near term fishing quality is the measure, I don't think its true. I am hoping that into fall however flows will be even less and the fishing even better.